In Loving Memory

Hit the Tip Jar?

Get Social

I spent the day with my mother and while having lunch, the subject of my high blood pressure came up. I’m at the age where Mother had to be medicated for hers, and she’s now advising me to start taking an aspirin every day even though my doctor doesn’t think that’s necessary yet. Strokes run in both sides of my mother’s family, and honestly that scares me. I asked her if there was anything on my biological father’s side of the family that I needed to be aware of. She didn’t think so. Both of his grandparents lived healthy lives to old age. I knew that his father had passed away. What I did not know was that my biological father had also passed away.

He’d had cancer, and passed away a couple or so years ago. I don’t know a whole lot more than that, but a quick Google search on my phone while we were talking found where he was buried. It’s not that I didn’t believe her; I think I wanted confirmation that he was dead.

Maybe this makes me a horrible person, but I had no love for my biological father. I didn’t hate him. But I wouldn’t have pissed on him to save his life if he was on fire either. He was a liar and a coward. He tried to kill my mother. He tried on more than one occasion to kidnap me.

He had wanted nothing to do with me after Mother remarried. I was fine with that. Several of his family members have contacted me at various times in my adult life. I made it clear to that I wanted nothing to do with him or his family. Then one of his grandchildren had contacted me a few years back, telling me a long story about how he was sick, in the hospital, dying. Granted this was the third or fourth “he’s dying” story I’d been told, so I took it with a grain of salt. I offered her my sympathy for her impending loss, but again expressed my desire to be left alone by his family.

The stories that I was told that he told them varied. I didn’t know if they were lying to me, or if he had lied to them. And honestly, I didn’t care at that point. My adult introduction to that man was him having his wife call me, pretending to be a private investigator (who incidentally could not give me any credentials or believable information) saying that I was adopted and he had been searching my whole life for me.

Speaking to my mother and other relatives, as well as my own research into my birth and later adoption, of course proved this to be false.

Another time, his wife just shows up out of the blue at my job, wanting me to leave with her. I assumed he was nearby and I am not keen on going by myself with someone who had tried to kidnap me in the past, thank you very much. It took a threat of a restraining order and cease and desist letter from a lawyer to get him to back off.

For a while I started taking different routes home in case I was being followed. I didn’t completely trust the law to protect me.

A part of me has always feared a repeat of past events, or an escalation. The stories I’ve been told about this man alone would have served as enough warning. And his behavior I’d seen first-hand only cemented fears I had been hiding in the back of my mind.